Wednesday, December 21, 2016

FAKE NEWS

We're just starting to see some lip service paid to the cornucopia of fake news, libel and fraud that we call social media. The first I encountered this morning was a picture of a table in the shape of a swastika in a article that made it look like it came from The Daily Mail. It tells us it's something new from Ikea. Of course it's not and it apparently has appeared in other countries made to look like other legitimate newspapers printed it. The picture is of a work of art done by a Berlin artist in 2011 and intended to be a cynical look at the false promises of Fascism, but someone doesn't like Ikea and goodness knows, in our lawless cyber world, anything goes.

There's a real observation called Gresham's law which says the good currency is driven off the market by bad currency. Likewise, real news is driven off the market by fake news. There are no longer constraints on or impediments to the libel and slander of fake information.

There is no bottom and even the notorious National Enquirer seems encouraged by the anarchy as you can see in the current issue smearing Malia Obama:

I'm sure Ikea is outraged and hot to punish whomever
did this and the Obama family should also be, but they really have no recourse because the legacy of the Web is chaos, lawlessness and loss of civilization. Efforts to control it, as Facebook has claimed will be made are likely to be useless given the volume and the viciousness and the appetite for hate now warming up faster than the Arctic latitudes.

As you probably know, I'm an atheist. gods, spirits and a universe that has purpose and sentience are completely absurd to me, but that doesn't mean I don't wish there were an Enlil to drown mankind once again. If only he could do it and leave the innocent animals alone.